St Katharine Drexel

Anyone who knows me knows that family is everything to me. I treasure my family and feel that I have been given a true gift of having so many of them living right here in the San Diego area. One of the best attributes I enjoy of the Moran family is our sense of humor. The ability to tease, to laugh, and to enjoy life and add a little spark and thrill. I have a friend at school who always takes a little time in catching on to my humor, which even makes it all the more delightful. I must say that the Kelly side of the family also bears this attribute and I don't think anyone enjoys this more than my cousin, Cork.

How does all of this relate to St. Katharine Drexel? One might ask that as I ramble on about family, but the truth is that I have had a delightful weekend with my grandniece, Kayla. We have had many laughs and some fun times. I have the honor and priviledge to be her sponsor for Confirmation. Part of her assignment was to write a saint report. She had a little problem of settling on one saint, but finally decided on St. Katharine Drexel. Now, oddly enough, I found a prayer card for St. Katharine in my closet. I have many of the prayer cards of deceased relatives and she was among them.

Now, of course, this sent me on a bit of a journey. How and why did I have this prayer card? I contacted my cousin, Cork, in Wyoming to see if he remembered a nun on my mother's side of the family. I distinctly remember corresponding with a nun in the family when I was a girl. Could it have been Katharine Drexel? I did not think so. Then, I spoke with my brother, Pat, did he remember a nun? No, he had no recollection of any nun, where upon, he said I should not depend upon his memory of such things. (I did have to giggle.) Finally, I trudged up into the closet and got my O'Donnell family tree down. There it was Regina T. Conlin who became Sr. Francis Loretto, S.S.J. She was the daughter of Hugh John F. Conlin and Johanna C. O'Connell and was the cousin, I believe, of my grandmother. I thought that, perhaps, she was in the same order as St. Katharine Drexel and that is why I had the prayer card (dated 1959).

St. Katharine Drexel founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and worked with Native and African Americans. This is not the same order of sisters. I did, however, contact the Sisters of St. Joseph (who taught me at St. Agnes, but it was the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange) to ask if they had any information on Sr. Francis Loretto. Kayla and I continued to research St. Katharine and ended up losing what we had typed, which was my fault, but we all know that God works in mysterious ways. Kayla did some more reading when she went to bed and I hit the computer running in the morning.

To become a saint in the Catholic church one needs to go through a process of investigation and part of that process is two documented miracles. I researched the website for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and found the two documented miracles for St. Katharine Drexel. Are you ready for this? They were both cures for deafness. How odd is that?

So the mystery still remains, why do I have those two prayer cards of St. Katharine Drexel? Now, Kayla has one of them to take home and I will keep the remaining one. I will await a reply from the archivist of the Sisters of St. Joseph to see if I hear anything back about Sr. Francis Loretto. Life is an adventure and a mystery!